The Los Angeles Times has noticed the anti-testing backlash across the U.S.(registration required).
The most aggressive [anti-testing candidate] has been Bill McBride, the Democratic nominee in Florida, who is pledging to scrap the testing-based system for grading school performance that Republican Gov. Jeb Bush counts as a key achievement...Democratic nominees in Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Texas also are pledging to roll back their states' use of standardized tests.
The article contains this whopper from Mr. McBride himself:
"High-stakes testing has never been supported by people who know anything about how kids should be treated and how they should be evaluated," he said. "A standardized test shouldn't be a determinant of anything other than to find where kids are [academically], and then you ... help them."
Now, it's not that Mr. McBride doesn't have some useful ideas for how standardized tests can be used, or that he is wrong in claiming that some uses are not helpful or valid. He plans to water down the usefulness of the existing tests, of course, by refusing to rank schools by performance and refusing to offer vouchers to parents whose kids are in failing schools. He does plan a "report card" for schools that incorporates test scores, but if schools suffer no disadvantage by ranking at the bottom, and parents have no say in whether their child can switch out of failing school, what's the point in giving a report card in the first place? What's the point of a school report card that is essentially no-stakes?
What's more, it's hard to take seriously anyone who makes the claim that "high-stakes testing has never been supported by people who know anything about how kids should be treated". It's a bald-faced whopper that I wouldn't expect even from a politician, and it's a slap in the face to testing organizations, school district adminstrators, teachers, and the schools who rely on high-stakes testing as a method to help their students improve. I'd like to see Mr. McBride try that line on any of the prinicipals listed in the report, No Excuses: Seven Principals of Low-Income Schools Who Set the Standard For High Acheivement. One of the indispensable methods listed by these principals is, "Rigorous and regular testing leads to continuous student acheivement".
So who's backing Mr. McBride?
McBride denies that his agenda has been shaped by the teachers: "The teachers have never asked anything of me."...But the ties between his campaign and the 122,000-member Florida Education Assn. are broad and deep. The union provided McBride his first major endorsement, invested nearly $2 million in advertising that helped him upset former U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno for the Democratic nomination and has detailed its longtime political director to serve as McBride's campaign manager for the general election.
Much of that commitment has been generated by opposition to Bush's testing and voucher program, said Maureen Dinnen, the union's president. "It ... puts the blame on teachers for everything that is wrong in education."
No, it just refuses to allow teachers to escape blame entirely, which is what the union would prefer.
I agree that testing in and of itself does not solve problems, and I can understand the frustration of teachers whose students perform poorly on tests, in school districts that have not implemented useful reforms. But the tests are still the best way to see which reforms work and which don't. Mr. McBride, and the teachers' union, would like to remove the methods of making that distinction.